Calculus in Engineering

I started the first day of intensives with a riveting 4 hours of AP Calculus testing, leaving me very much brain dead and in a mathematical mindset for the remainder of the day. Already in this mindset I decided to make the most of it and put it towards my research day.

High school students often complain to their pre-calculus and calculus about how high-level math will never be used after college, so I decided to find out how accurate this really was by looking into how calculus is everyday in a career in engineering.

While engineers won’t often run into MacLauren series or Riemann Sums, they utilize integrals and derivative in daily practice of calculating optimization and summation. One of Carpenter Technologies many divisions is their aerospace engineering division, which works closely with NASA. In aerospace engineering, the ideal rocket equation is completed through calculus and, furthermore, the analysis of rockets in stages can be done through the implementation of integrals. More or less all physics models will utilize calculus.

Mechanical engineers are also highly recruited at Carpenter Technologies and often use integrals to calculate the surface area of complex shapes and thus their frictional forces. Using related rates and integration, they’re also able to calculate flow rates for any projects in which liquids may be required. One of the most important laws in mechanical engineering, Newton’s Law of Cooling, a differential equation in HAVC design, also requires integration to be solved.

Some less popular fields at Carpenter, civil and structural engineering depend heavily on calculus to calculate the forces acting upon and within heavy structures. When civil engineerings design storm drains or open channel systems, hydrolysis analysis programs utilize calculus to calculate volume through rate of flow over time. Before even starting to build any structures, calculus is necessary to determine the bearing capacity of the ground and the strength of soil.